The administration of Jobcentre Plus is a matter for the chief executive of the Jobcentre Plus, David Anderson. He will write to the hon. Member.

Letter from David Anderson to Mr. Howard Flight, dated 23 February 2005

The Secretary of State has asked me to reply directly to your questions concerning the average time taken to process a claim for Incapacity Benefit, Income Support, Income-Based Jobseeker's Allowance and Contribution-Based Jobseeker's Allowance in each year since 1975. This is something which falls within the responsibilities delegated to me as Chief Executive of Jobcentre Plus.

Jobcentre Plus sets internal performance measures for managing its workloads in addition to the published targets set by Ministers. These internal measures include clearance times for Incapacity Benefit, Income Support and Jobseeker's Allowance. Currently, these internal measures are being met.

You will see from the following tables that the Average Actual Clearance Time for each of the benefits shown has increased, although our performance targets are still being met. The upward trend in clearance times reflects the greater emphasis on secure and accurate payment of benefit. Changes to the Claims and Payments regulations in 1997 put the onus of proof on customers to provide supporting evidence for a claim.

Increasing effort has been applied to enforcing this regime and we believe that this has been reflected in reductions in fraud (fraud and error losses have reduced by 37 per cent. between 1998 and 2004).

There has also been a significant period of change across the Department; the creation of Jobcentre Plus and The Pension Service involved considerable movement of staff between the two agencies and consequently required the training of new benefit processing officers.

Incapacity Benefit

Figures are only available from April 1998. The available information is in the table.

Average processing times for incapacity benefit claims.

Calendar

year

Average actual clearance time (days)

April-December 1998

11.9

1999

15.9

2000

16.0

2001

15.7

2002

16.2

2003

15.7

2004

16.9

Source:

Central Data Unit for figures up to and including July 2004; Management Information Systems Programme 04 (MISP04) from August 2004 to December 2004.

Income Support

Figures are only available from April 1994. The available information is in the table.

Average processing times for income support claims

Calendar

year

Average actual clearance time (days)

April to December 1994

5.6

1995

6.1

1996

7.0

1997

7.6

1998

8.8

1999

9.2

2000

9.2

2001

9.9

2002

8.7

2003

10.3

2004

10.9

Source:

Central Data Unit for figures up to and including July 2004; Management Information Systems Programme 04 (MISP04) from August 2004 to December 2004.

Jobseeker's Allowance

Figures are not available broken down by type of Jobseeker's Allowance. Figures are only available from 1997. The available information is in the table.

Average processing times for jobseeker's allowance claims

Calendar

year

Average actual clearance time (days)

1997

8.1

1998

8.7

1999

9.7

2000

9.1

2001

9.6

2002

10.2

2003

10.8

2004

12.0

Source:

Central Data Unit for figures up to and including July 2004; Management Information Systems Programme 04 (MISP04) from August 2004 to December 2004.